City leaders in Cleveland, Ohio, announced their goal of making the city lead safe by 2028, local television station WEWS reports. The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition aims to drastically reduce the number of children exposed to lead through identifying funding mechanisms, community outreach, and new or updated legislation.
In Cleveland, lead exposure among the city's youth typically comes from peeling paint or lead dust from homes built before the federal government outlawed lead paint in 1978. Studies have estimated that more than 80% of Cleveland's housing stock was built before 1978.
Released earlier this month, two new studies conducted by Case Western Reserve University found a quarter of kindergarteners in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District begin their education with a history of elevated lead in their blood. The studies also found 13% of the city's youth that underwent testing had lead in their bloodstreams at or above levels recommended by the Center for Disease Control.
As part of it's goal for a lead-safe city in 2023, Cleveland city leaders announced plans to create a lead safe home fund, which will go towards cleaning lead-filled rental properties across the city. Officials also reiterated the goal is to make the city lead safe, not lead free, as ridding Cleveland properties of all lead would likely prove a financially burdensome task.
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